Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday October 06, 2011 @10:02AM
from the how-much-would-you-bet dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Today, Wired.co.uk is running a story, 'Cold fusion rears its head as "E-Cat" research promises to change the world.' It gives an overview of the technology that claims to fuse hydrogen and nickel into copper, with no radioactive by-products, to produce copious amounts of heat, inexpensively, with a 1 megawatt plant scheduled to come on line later this month. Apparently, Wired was not aware that today is a big test in Italy by scientists from around the world, who will be observing the technology in operation, including self-looped mode. A real-time update page has been set up at PESWiki, which has been a primary news provider of this technology since it was announced last January." Wired's article is remarkably optimistic. I'd love for this to be true, but many decades of scientific-looking free-energy machine scams make it hard to be other than cynical; the claim of a secret catalyst which "can be produced at low cost," controlled-access for outside observers, the lack of published science to explain the claimed effect, and skepticism even from the free-energy world — along with a raftofpro-E-Catwebsites registered anonymously earlier this year — all make it sound like this follows the marketing style of previous "over unity" / perpetual motion machines. I invite Andrea Rossi to take part in a Slashdot interview, if he's willing to answer readers' questions about his claims.

Skeptics point to the lack of published science, and the way that Rossi keeps details of his special catalyst secret. They also point to his past involvement in Petroldragon, a company involved in converting organic waste into fuel, which collapsed in the 1990's amidst allegations of dumping toxic waste. (Rossi maintains that he was the victim in this complex case).

Until August of this year, Rossi was planning his big launch in Greece, and an E-Cat factory was being built in Xanthi. But the deal has somehow fallen through for unexplained reasons, vaguely blamed on pressure from "international energy interests" who may be threatened by the invention.

"According to my analysis, his claim has no scientific credibility," Krivit told Wired.co.uk. The device he claimed to heat a factory in Bondeno seems to exist only on paper."

At this point, I'm calling it 'tabloid science journalism.' This guy is looking to get rich quick not contribute to human knowledge so I'm not paying attention to him just yet. Hopefully I get to backpedal in a couple months when he starts shipping but... well, I'm betting there will be some 'delay' imposed by 'ominous forces' as Rossi's wallet fattens.

This guy is looking to get rich quick not contribute to human knowledge so I'm not paying attention to him just yet.

If what he's selling is true (my money is on not for the record) he can get rich and change the world for the better. I can't hardly blame someone with a potentially world altering invention wanting to keep it under wraps for as long as possible. Yeah, it's against the open source ethos, but it's also how reality works for 99% of the people out there; you don't give your work away for free. Quite frankly, this would be the exact kind of invention that the patent system works for; one that would still be useful in 20 years, is simple to replicate given a working sample (presumably), and is completely un-obvious to experts in the field.

Personally, they won't convince me until they are making money over the course of a year from operations (as opposed to investment) and/or they hand over a sample of the device to some independent researchers. There's way too much about this company that just doesn't smell right, but that's just my opinion.

Screw that. I already filed patent apps for "Rossi-device-in-a-computing-device" (which is innovative prior art upon which your "Rossi-device-on-the-internet" infringes, and very likely your "Rossi-device-with-an-LCD-digital-clock" because I already patented the "Rossi-device-with-an-electronic-display" in addition to the aforementioned "Rossi-device-in-a-computing-device" which covers clocks) and "Rossie-Device-in-a-portable-wireless-communications-device," oh, and a "Rossi-device-powered-wheeled-vehicle."

I have a better idea. Why not create a fake solar plant and sell the energy created by this cold-fusion or whatever and sell it cheap. Only after you start raking in the cash do you tip your hand as to how your really generating the power. Via some unknown but effective method. Scientists are welcome to observe and discover the raw physics behind it.

I can't hardly blame someone with a potentially world altering invention wanting to keep it under wraps for as long as possible.

then...

Yeah, it's against the open source ethos, but it's also how reality works for 99% of the people out there; you don't give your work away for free.

then...

Quite frankly, this would be the exact kind of invention that the patent system works for....

You are trying to argue both sides of the fence here. If you had a potentially world-altering invention, you would be racing to the patent office at each stage of the invention to prevent competition. That is how is works for 99% of the people out there. Otherwise, you would eventually be giving your work away for free.

So where are the patents? If there are no patents, and this thing (through some miracle) is legitimate, then it is now ripe for someone else to swoop in and patent it (first to file wins; former publication, which this would qualify as, is mostly irrelevant nowadays). That would make this guy the dumbest inventor on Earth.

Let's say they are a huge success. Just how long, and for what prices, will I be able to buy a bag of nickel to feed into the machine?

You seem to have no idea of the energy densities of nuclear reactions. A bag of nickel that you can lift would power an entire country for a year. If it works (big 'if') then the cost of nickel is not going to be a problem.

The real problem is that fusing hydrogen and nickel into copper is an energy-negative reaction. I just tried to do the sums to work out how much energy would be released, and came out with a negative number. If I'd checked the periodic table first, I'd have known to expect this - n

Until August of this year, Rossi was planning his big launch in Greece, and an E-Cat factory was being built in Xanthi. But the deal has somehow fallen through for unexplained reasons, vaguely blamed on pressure from "international energy interests" who may be threatened by the invention.

This one I don't find at all implausible, at least taken by itself. Greece is collapsing economically, corruption is hilariously wide-spread, and international energy interests include the likes of OPEC and Exxon; I wouldn't put a damn thing past those organizations, and Greek officials are probably about the easiest in the world to bribe at the moment.

It is also possible that Greece was not corrupt enough. Italy is a good place if you want to set up scams... their legal system is fairly two-tiered.. if you have the cash you don't really have to worry about laws and the laws do a good job of making sure weaker people can not negatively impact you.

Rossi does not want your money. He has solely funded all development of the e-cat with his own money: He has sold a company he owned, and he has now even sold his house. Peswiki asked him if they should set up a donation site for him, but rossi does not want that too. He also does not want to apply for FP7-ENERGY, a european research program for energy.

So Rossi either is a completely self-deluded man that manages to delude lots of other people around him as well, or he really has something working.

No, a catalyst is just something that participates in a reaction, but is not consumed by it. For example, muons have been proposed as a catalyst for hydrogen fusion. If you replace the electron in orbit around a proton with a muon, you get an atom with a much smaller radius than a normal hydrogen atom and no charge. Moving two of these close enough together for the strong attraction to overcome the electrostatic repulsion requires a lot less energy than with normal hydrogen atoms. The only slight proble

There is LOTS of information available if you know where to look. It appears to dribble out and there is very little mainstream media covering it. But here are some good links to the science and demos:

Most of the world operates on first-to-file, not first-to-invent. If you had a working "secret sauce", how insane would you have to be to not file a zillion patents on it? Protecting such inventions is exactly what the patent system is actually for.

It reads like an Al Gore infomercial, not a patent. More space is given to banging on about saving the planet than about the actual claims.

Ah, here's the snake oil: "said high temperature generates internuclear percussions which are made stronger by the catalytic action of optional elements [...] for a proper operation, the hydrogen injection must be carried out under a variable pressure".

That's pretty awesome... he claims that 1g of nickel can produce as much power as 517 tons of oil. So either he's a genius, or a complete nut. Either way, it should be pretty easy to prove. That kind of scale seems pretty damn hard to fake.

>It reads like an Al Gore infomercial, not a patent. More space is given to banging on about saving the planet than about the actual claims.

What? Are you saying Gore's global warming presentations were full of false information? Granted, his agenda was to popularize a marginalized message (which what it was when he started) but the facts were in line with IPCC.

Is a patent with "secret sauce" still actually a valid patent? If other people don't know what that sauce is, how could they possibly prevent themselves from inadvertently violating the patent? That's like claiming some other company stole your code and open sourced it, and then faffing about in court for years without giving any evidence to that fact.

The summary says that the device consumes hydrogen and nickel to produce copper by fusion (something that seems naively likely given their atomic numbers but a bit unlikely given their mass numbers, unless we're creating weird and radioactive isotopes here) but the article says that the nickel is just a catalyst over which the hydrogen passes.

I invite Andrea Rossi to take part in a Slashdot interview, if he's willing to answer readers' questions about his claims.

The guy doesn't answer to us. We're not experts; the vast majority of us aren't even educated layman on the topic of nuclear physics. How pretentious and pointless is it inviting him to waste time justifying his "claims" to us rather than suggesting he have an open Q&A with the staff at CERN or something?

No it doesn't. The graph starts slowly sliding back down, as one would expect of a large metal container full of hot metal. The temperature of the steam stays at 100C, but that's axiomic - if it wasn't at 100C it wouldn't be steam.

I'm fairly sure steam can be hotter than 100C, just as ice can be colder than 0C, and water can be any temperature between 0C and 100C. All figures assume 1000 millibars of pressure, obviously - allow that to change and, well, you can be even more flexible.

Nothing I'm writing here should be read as implying I think there's anything in the story, I'm just saying, steam, well, it's H2O in gas form, and gaseous H2O can get pretty hot.

It's not new physics at all, if you read the patent application. Nuclear reactions are a well understood part of physics.

What he is claiming is fusion of Nickel and Hydrogen to make Copper. A simple inspection of the Periodic Table shows that much is plausible since Copper is one place higher, and adding a proton moves you up one place. Next you would look at the accurate atomic weights. When you do hot fusion, such as Deuterium + Tritium = Helium + proton, If you sum the atomic weights of the starting

Nickel has the highest binding energy of any nucleus. When stars die it is because they've turned every element into iron and nickel and it is impossible to fuse anything further exothermically. Heavier elements, including copper, can only be produced in supernovas and they take excess energy to make. How could you get energy out of changing nickel to copper if copper has a lower binding energy? You can't. This process, like most free energy scams, defies the conservation of energy at a fundamental level.

They appear to claim that injecting a nickel powder with hydrogen gas under high pressure forces hydrogen into situations where the nickel will capture a proton, turning into an unstable copper isotope, which will beta decay back to nickel emitting a positron which annihilates with an electron, producing heat energy.

As far as I know there is no known theoretical basis for such a reaction. Even if you could squeeze the hydrogen into really tight spaces in a heated crystal structure then cool it to get atomic forces to squeeze the hydrogen to an insane degree, you still won't come close to enough force to get proton capture. And the heat levels they are talking about aren't going to get there either.

History is littered with crackpots who believed their own nonsense and fakers who drummed up hype to get investor's money (or just coast for a few years while drawing a paycheck and not having to get a real job). I predict more of the same in this case.

I'm not saying this isn't crackpot deceptive bullshit, mind you. (I mean, it's an Italian we're talking about here, right?:P) But it shouldn't be ruled out so fast. Fight bad science with science and all that.

I seem to recall seeing this, or a very similar theory, passed around a couple months ago, maybe even posted to slashdot. Wonder if it's the same guy...

Inspection of the atomic masses of nickel, copper, and hydrogen isotopes will tell you if any of the possible reactions are exothermic. If none are, the Rossi device would violate conservation of energy. If there are any possible reactions, that narrows down what to investigate.

Even if you could squeeze the hydrogen into really tight spaces in a heated crystal structure then cool it to get atomic forces to squeeze the hydrogen to an insane degree, you still won't come close to enough force to get proton capture.

So.... Are you sure about that? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyroelectric_fusion [wikipedia.org] Sure it's not a positive energy fusion reaction, but they're doing exactly what you're describing and obtaining fusion. So you might want to reconsider your position.

Besides hydrogen which is supplying the needed electrons to turn nickle into copper but that he is also using Iron Ferrite Magnets.Magnets have been shown to help in HHO production in fuel cell experimentsThe Iron found in the used nickle would be explained by Iron Ferrite magnet deterioration in unit use.

The idea of getting more energy out of something than put in is NOT contrary to physics, in fact it fits quite well.Otherwise life would not be able to sustain itself. Its really quite obvious it really ab

One argument skeptics are making about the most recent test performed is that the system was only allowed to self sustain for 35 minutes before the test was ended. Skeptics are trying to state that due to this short period of time, the energy expended that kept the water boiling was due to "thermal inertia." Simply put, they are trying to say that the heat retained in the metal and other materials in the device was enough to keep the water boiling for 35 minutes. This is absurd for many reasons.

Ok, when I have a rapidly boiling pot on the stove and turn it off, the boiling does stop in 1 minute, not 35. So, I can see why people are stumped after witnessing this "parlor trick."

The steam temperature of the E-Cat only dropped about 10 C (from 130 to 120 C) over the course of 35 minutes. This indicates that a very large amount of energy was being produced via a cold fusion reaction. If there was not a cold fusion reaction taking place, the water would have stopped boiling immediately, and the temperature would have dropped much more.

You and I have very definitions of "a very large amount of energy". We're talking about nuclear fusion, and you say that keeping a pot of water at 125 degrees qualifies as "a very large amount of energy"?

The Steam temperature is very different than the water temperature. I'm assuming that while the steam temp dropped from 130 C to 120 C, the water temp dropped from 400 C to 99 C. If you put the steam temp sensor far enough away from the production source, this seems about right. Even at 400 C, the water won't instantly boil away, and especially not if it is under pressure. I'm beginning to understand exactly how this parlor trick works.

The Wired article makes it sound as if the company has already designed the consumer unit, and is ready to put it in production. The facts I've listed above make it sound more like a strange phenomenon that warrants a bit of investigation. These are very different things. If the reaction in the lab isn't even self-sustaining, how can they be discussing the design of consumer units yet?

Temperature of the steam leaving the apparatus is irrelevant, what matters is the amount of heat being lost. They don't provide anywhere near enough information to evaluate their claims which is obviously a big red flag in and of itself. I imagine with a well insulated pressure vessel, some smart regulator design, and a block of metal to act as a heat sink, it should be pretty easy to create a device that will continue to produce steam at 35 minutes; not very much steam mind you, but enough to produce the

Well, we got slashdotted, and we were already getting bogged down on the server from the traffic we were getting; so we're in process of moving the site to a high-traffic server. Sorry for the inconvenience. It should be resolved shortly. Today is a historic day for cold fusion. Lots of people will be watching.

Many of us in the fusion world, amateur (surprisingly large) and pro, think this must be crap. One respectable scientist we know of has tried to dupe Rossi, and did get some heat - about the amount you'd expect from the chemical reactions possible. No more. No excess copper in the reactor after.

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For those saying "why aren't there patents" - there have been attempts, which were rejected for lack of clarity on what was being patented. For most of the time (including now as far as I know) the only people willing to publish their papers are owned by, well, themselves.

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I've not looked up the masses, but yes, this end of the periodic table doesn't have much you can do with binding energy in it. I probably should, so I could state definitively that this can't work. If it was really that easy, would we not have seen it before now, happening by accident and so on? I put hot H (actually mostly other H isotopes) in nickel containing stainless steel daily -- nothing special happens at any energy regime I reach (which are in general well above what the Rossi claims are).

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I think everyone honestly in the fusion field wants some form of it to be real, and to work. But we also realize that there are a lot of people in this field for various dishonest reasons, from gaining corner offices with perks, to tenure, to just making sure they have a job for life, as in give us X billion more dollars and Y more years, and we'll really make it work this time - we just didn't make it big and expensive enough the last 4-5 roundy rounds. Even fairly honest people fall into that trap when it means lifetime security at a cushy job, and those of us in the open source fusion world (yes, it exists and is thriving) wish it were otherwise - but there it is.

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I AM a betting man - my day job is as a trader. Anyone want to take a bet with me? You get the side that "this is real" to win, I'll take the other side for plenty of money and a year time limit. I'll put my money where my mouth is. I'll take anyone, but what would be fun is say if Rossi himself would take that bet for say, half a million -- with a registered agent holding the bucks (must be real money, and guaranteed no counterparty risk). I note that while they've taken plenty of "bets" it's under conditions where it's not actually a bet -- they don't pay back if they fail.

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To me it looks like they climbed to the top of the snake oil tree and fell out, hitting every branch on the way down.
No disclosure. No duplication of the results in independent labs. No explanation of why it could work. No patent apps that actually disclose the process. Just the usual "gimme money and someday it will work". A couple of prominent boosters mean nothing - those guys can be had with the average financier's lunch money, famous or not, and examples abound on both sides of every science controversy.

About a month ago I got an email from my dad in which he asked my opinion on this issue, since I have a PhD in engineering and work as a researcher. The case had been presented to the public in a Italian TV magazine [youtube.com]. I drafted a debunking on various grounds, which for your benefit I report here.

Short version: this Rossi guy is a convicted felon, his buddy Focardi an old, crooked professor with no relevant publications since the 60s, and they are after the money of naive investors.

Detailed version:

Mr. Rossi is a convicted felon, known for the Petroldragon [wikipedia.org] affair: in the 70s, he claimed he could make oil out of garbage. He was eventually sentenced five times, including bankruptcy fraud of said Petroldragon society. He managed to dodge some more convictions thanks to Italy's statutory limitations law.

Prof. Focardi has an academic career spanning over 50 years, yet he has amazingly few publications. On ScienceDirect only about 10 publications show up, of which only 2 as first author and dating to the 60s, the other ones are publication orgies with a dozen of authors or so dating to the early 70s. The greatest is the latest publication, dating back to 1986, with TWENTY-ONE other authors, that over 25 years gathered only 4 citations.
In any case, Focardi never published anything on fusion, cold or warm.

The patent filed by Rossi [uibm.gov.it] is titled "process and apparatus to obtain exothermal reactions, in particular from nickel and hydrogen". There is no mention whatsoever that the reaction is nuclear.

The mysterious device is explained vaguely (also in Italian sources) referring to likewise mysterious unknown nuclear forces. So, there is no theory, no experiment that can be reproduced, only claims.

Mr. Rossi is therefore only looking for rich, greedy fools that will pump money in his next bankruptcy fraud. As a consequence of a certain prime minister and his modifications to the legal system, crimes like bankruptcy fraud are now very difficult to prosecute in Italy, so Rossi could just get away with it this time.

Professor Rossi is already independently wealthy, money is not his motivation.

If his motive is pure and he does not want money, why must his nickel based catalyst remain so secret?

From the article:

The catalyst is secret, but Rossi says it can be produced at low cost.

Why doesn't he just file for an international patent and release a paper to a journal like all other scientists who are financially interested do? Hell, if he's "independently wealthy" he can screw the patent or anything and go down as one of the greatest men of all time. Think about how many wars, death and resource contention this could alleviate. Right now I view this as either a

Rossi has spent all of his savings on this. He would like to see his invention do well in the commercial market. Only a fool, or the GPL crowd, would think its a good idea to toil away on an invention for 20 years and then give the idea away without making a profit.
Rossi has always stated that he expects to be vindicated not in scientific peer-reviewed papers, but by how many units he can sell.
I believe he has discovered something of value--but this test, and the test in the US later this month will be

Oh, so he's not independently wealthy. According to your rendition of the past, he USED to be independently wealthy. But he's not now.

Of course, without evidence (say, his comprehensive expenditures record for this research), there's no provable difference between "He used to be independently wealthy, but sunk all his riches into this" and "He never had a cent, and he still doesn't" Both sentences would be continued "... and therefore needs to secure his exclusive rights to this innovation, in order to..."

Perhaps you should read up what the second law of thermodynamic actually states, before using it in arguments.After all a transmutation like the proposed one is exothermic, so in fact it could work;DAs you are obviously to lazy to educate yourself, the second law of thermodynamics says: "There is no change in state possible that only transfers heat from a body with low temperature to a bdy with higher temperature" Or: "It is impossible to build a cyclic(or periodic) working machine that lifts a mass by dra

Is the process pulling hydrogen out of water or are they providing pure hydrogen? If pulled from water would that mean the only byproduct is oxygen? If so this could be huge. Yes I did RTFA.

If this turns out to be legit (and it's a very big if), then it's a nuclear reaction. The energy available from nuclear reactions dwarfs that of chemical reactions by many orders of magnitude, so chemical nature of the source of hydrogen would be irrelevant.

I think the big question on everyone's mind is if this actually *is* a nuclear reaction. There could be some sort of chemical reaction going on with the hydrogen, causing it to give off heat. If so, this 'reactor' is just another hydrogen fuel cell (possibly more efficient, maybe not). Not that a fuel cell which can be made using a "cheap catalyst" would be a bad thing - Slashdot has had a number of stories of people working towards such. But, fuel cells are not an energy "source", in the same way as an alkaline battery is not an energy source - but it could be a very convenient storage mechanism.

Uranium is hard to fuse. You can't move from Uranium to Plutonium easily, lots of input energy required. It happens, but it's not efficient. Most of the Uranium in breeder reactors turns into lighter elements, and a lot of energy is released. Enrichment setups where you line the walls of the reactor core with Uranium absorb energy lost in reaction to radiation. The natural production of Plutonium occurs the same way.

Conversely, breaking down Helium or Carbon into smaller elements (Hydrogen, Lithium, etc) is not easy. Fusing Li + Li into C would emit energy, whereas fissing He into H would lose energy. It's exactly in reverse.

Iron is the most stable point here. Fissing Iron into lighter elements is hard, and absorbs energy to create mass--the products of the fission are slightly heavier. Fusing iron into heavier elements is also hard, and creates slightly heavier elements.

Nickle is heavier than iron.

Fissing Cu into Ni + H would result in Ni + H + free particles (electrons, neutrons, whatever) that are LIGHTER than the original piece of Cu. This is because part of the mass of the original Cu is released as thermal energy. Conversely, fusing Ni + H into Cu will bind some of the thermal energy input into the structure of the Cu atom, raising the mass of the products.

This would be awesome; nickel and hydrogen are both extremely plentiful, and if copper is a byproduct, this would become a very inexpensive source of pure copper, which can eliminate at least some environment-damaging copper mines.

Adding to that - I'll believe it when I see it. We haven't even achieved a sustainable, practical Hydrogen to helium reaction, and we're expected to believe a hydrogen+nickel fusion reactor is going online this month?

If it works, awesome! It will mean the "energy crisis" is solved, and fuel prices will plummet. In reality, I think the chance of this being real is every bit as high as the chance that the Moller Skycar will go into full production this year.

This would be awesome; nickel and hydrogen are both extremely plentiful,

No 'they' aren't.Nickel is the fifth most common element in (in, iN, IN!) the Earth.Nickel is a metallic element, making up [ONLY] 0.008% of the Earth's crust.http://oldsite.nickelinstitute.org/index.cfm?ci_id=13&la_id=1 [nickelinstitute.org]Nickel is abundant in space, where supernovae and stellar cookinghas created it in chunks and hurled it about the universe. Exactlywhere we can't get to it.

[although I have imagined a time where 'mining' asteroids ended up beingthe controlled deorbiting of chunks of mined asteroids. Think there arebig crowds for a shuttle launch? I think the antithesis would be a deorbitedchunk of nickel. New lines of betting would come up in Las Vegas. Peoplewith a death wish would use boats and planes or pilgrimage to the targetzone. We'd have some awesome footage... for the first dozen times, thenpeople would get bored with it, haha.]

Hydrogen is only abundant on earth in molecular or compound formwith a really weak 0.14% by weight showing. Once again, abundant inspace, where we can't get it to cheaply.

and if copper is a byproduct, this would become a very inexpensive source of pure copper

No, it wouldn't... are you getting that nickel for free??? Remember whyhydrogen cars "aren't taking off"? Where are you getting the hydrogen from?

which can eliminate at least some environment-damaging copper mines.

And replace them with nickel mines???

It sounds like you are regurgitating college 'book facts'.

Lastly, I know the nickel is used as a catalyst... and a lot might not be usedbut anything that increases its price will change the price of another processthat uses nickel and none of use want to see it go up in price. STEEL.

You really find a lack of skepticism about global warming out there? Rather, despite more skepticism than about any other topic in current science, 98% of scientists with expertise in the field conclude that anthropogenic global warming is a major threat to our species.

Sometime you might try skepticism about skepticism. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. A skepticism that's promoted by a PR firm working for the oil companies, that previously promoted skepticism about tobacco and cancer on behalf of the tobacco companies, is a good target for skepticism about skepticism. Or do you believe that loading up the lungs with tobacco is health, too, just as you apparently believe that loading up the atmosphere with CO2 is benign?

You really find a lack of skepticism about global warming out there? Rather, despite more skepticism than about any other topic in current science, 98% of scientists with expertise in the field conclude that anthropogenic global warming is a major threat to our species.

The question I'd like to ask the OP is, what is your track record on these issues? Has your skepticism on these subjects proven to be founded in the past, or have you had to eat crow over and over again before you move on to your next conspiracy?

There are no taboo subjects. If you have evidence that your cold fusion device works, and are competent enough to write a real paper demonstrating that it works, you'll be getting handed the Nobel prize within a couple years, while raking in billions of dollars from the thousands of corporations which are licensing reactors based on your patented design. Your comment might be a reflection of how quacks rationalize their inability to show evidence, but it has no reflection on how inventors and scientists d

Wow, that is one of the most elitist things I've ever heard. Just because I'm not willing to bend over and take abuse, I'm suddenly not good enough to be a scientist.

Yep, pretty much. Someone who doesn't want to take orders isn't good enough to be a soldier. Someone who doesn't want to run into burning buildings isn't good enough to be a firefighter. And someone who isn't willing to publish controversial work in the face of opposition isn't good enough to be a scientist. You can call that "elitist", if you want, but anyone with an IQ above the boiling point of Ether will realize that you're just whining because you want to be granted the same kind of respect and def